Digital Britain: new powers to tackle file sharing

 

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Posted on 16 Jun 2009 at 16:48

The UK government has committed to taking action to curb illegal file sharing, promising to introduce legislation to penalise internet users who ignore warnings about their activity.

In the Digital Britain report, published today, Communications Minister Lord Carter outlines the steps that the government plans to tackle “unacceptable” levels of unlawful file sharing and cut levels of “a civil form of theft” by 70 to 80%.

Initially that action will rely on the carrot rather than the stick. The government will introduce legislation that will require telecoms regulator Ofcom to compel ISPs to notify internet account holders when their account appears to have been used to infringe copyright, using a baseline level of unlawful file-sharing activity to be determined by the regulator.

“There is evidence that most people who receive a notification stop unlawful file-sharing,” the report says. “The Government believe that the notification process outlined here should have the effect of significantly reducing file sharing; but if it does not go far enough then further action will need to be taken.”

To that end, ISPs will also be required to maintain a database that will enable the minority of serious repeat infringers to be identified, subject to a court order.

At the same time the government will be pressing content providers to ensure that consumers have wider access to “highly affordable and convenient content” as well as more information about how to get legal content and what to avoid.

Lord Carter is confident that these measures will have a significant impact. Nonetheless, the government will also provide Ofcom with “backstop” powers, a stick should the carrot prove insufficient.

Legislation will provide Ofcom with the power to force ISPs to employ one or a combination of measures against persistent sharers. Proposed measures include: blocking websites and IP addresses, protocol blocking, port blocking, bandwidth capping; bandwidth shaping —limiting the speed of a subscriber’s access to selected protocols/services and/or capping the volume of data to selected protocols/services; and content identification and filtering.

“These powers should be used if, and only if, the combination of measures set out above has been fully implemented but has not succeeded in significantly reducing the level of unlawful file-sharing,” his report says.

Because of that caveat, the powers will only be made available if after 12 months the “carrot” has failed.

The threat of disconnection is conspicuous by its absence from the list of proposed powers. That will please digital rights campaigners, but hasn’t impressed the BPI, the main UK music industry body.

“The BPI welcomes Government’s recognition of the need for action but believes these proposals are far too weak to achieve the Government's clear target for significantly reducing illegal file sharing,” said BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor.

Taylor said the report was “digital dithering” that lacks the “graduated response”, ultimately ending with disconnection that “will be both a more effective and proportionate approach than the large scale litigation against file sharers advocated by the Government.”

Author: Simon Aughton